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NEW ORLEANS — A local principal who was fired amid the Confederate monument removal process over pictures of him at Lee Circle near a Confederate flag and videos of him wearing gear associated with white nationalists has spoken out about his termination via YouTube.

Nicholas Dean was principal of Crescent Leadership Academy, the school where students are sent if they are expelled.

He said in the YouTube video that he worked as principal there for three years.

“We had a lot of success,” he said. “I know that my students got a lot out of me being the leader of that school. As of right now, that’s done. It’s over.”

He was removed from the school after photos surfaced of him next to Confederate flags at the Lee Circle monument protests. Dean told Nola.com that he was only there to observe a historical event and wasn’t there to take a side on the issue.

But that was before a YouTube video was published showing Dean wearing rings associated with white nationalist movements and before it was discovered that Dean was interviewed on a podcast of The Revolutionary Conservative.

On that podcast, he said he doesn’t consider himself a white supremacist, but believes that others would identify him as one.

Dean expanded on that statement in the YouTube response above.

“When I said I’m not, by my standards, a white supremacist, I meant that I don’t believe in biological supremacy, biological superiority, or the fact that my skin is this color, means that I am better than someone whose skin is a different color,” he said.

Dean also criticized the person who took the photo of him near a Confederate flag and published it online. He calls him out by name in the video.

“A guy I knew was at the Lee memorial. It was late on a Thursday night, and I was down there, and he took a picture of me standing near a Confederate flag. He took it back to his all-black radio station, cuz he’s a black nationalist,” Dean said.

Dean defended his actions that led to his termination, noting that the only thing he’s guilty of is “believing that multiculturalism, diversity, ethnic pride or heritage, applied to me, too.”

The Recovery School District released a statement after the Crescent Leadership Academy board voted to fire Dean. The statement said, in part, that “the children of New Orleans should be able to trust that educators value their humanity, respect them as individuals, and will treat them with a sense of fairness and equality.”